Pubdate: Wed, 8 Aug 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Juan Forero

RANCHERS IN COLOMBIA BANKROLL THE VIGILANTES

MONTERIA, Colombia - A few years ago, Sergio Ochoa all but abandoned his 
ranch. Leftist guerrillas were extorting money from landowners and torching 
the homes of those who did not pay. Some cattlemen, including Mr. Ochoa's 
brother, were kidnapped. Others were killed.

"I had 14 extortion letters from these people," Mr. Ochoa said. "The 
guerrillas used to be all over."

Today Mr. Ochoa's ranch is inside a swath of northern Colombia that is one 
of the few rural areas not under the guerrillas' sway.

The reason is no secret: an organization of paramilitary fighters, the 
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, has wiped three rebel groups from 
the area in a fierce campaign characterized by massacres of peasants and 
assassinations.

Now an aggressive investigation by the national attorney general is vividly 
showing how landowners and businessmen here in Córdoba and in a neighboring 
province - the heart of the country's prime cattle-raising region - donated 
heavily to transform a small group of outlaws into an 8,000-man militia. In 
the process the Self-Defense Forces have become a huge challenge to 
President Andrés Pastrana's administration, which is under pressure from 
alarmed officials in Washington and Europe to dismantle the organization.

At the same time, the president and his advisers are in difficult peace 
negotiations with the guerrillas, talks that the paramilitary forces 
violently oppose. Indeed, those forces have stepped up the killings, 
slaying not only rebels but also trade unionists, peasant leaders, human 
rights workers and others they deem collaborators with the rebels. Already 
this year, paramilitary gunmen have killed nearly 1,300 people, according 
to the government's human rights ombudsman.

The government faces an entrenched, generously financed organization, one 
that earns huge sums from the cocaine trade and also benefits from the 
collaboration of some military units.

But perhaps more troubling to Colombia's democracy is how outwardly 
respectable citizens, fed up with the government's failure to control the 
guerrillas, have willingly financed the paramilitary group.

"How do you defend yourself against a well-armed, well-trained and numerous 
guerrilla force?" said one established rancher, Rodrigo García Caicedo, who 
admitted having donated in the past. "With an equally well-armed, 
well-trained and numerous organization."

People in Córdoba are, indeed, effusive about the Self-Defense Forces, 
perhaps nowhere more so than in the foothills of the Sinú Mountains, 
southeast of Montería.

In the town of Valencia, ground zero for guerrilla activity a decade ago, 
some speak of the paramilitary fighters as saviors, not only for battling 
rebels but also for paving a few roads and bringing electricity to some 
hamlets.

"The Self-Defense Forces are a cry of hope for everyone," said Cecilia 
Vargas, principal of a school outside the town that was built with 
paramilitary money. "We believe that without the Self-Defense Forces, which 
is the brake on the guerrillas, we would not be able to live here."

But critics say the government cannot allow such support to continue. "The 
government has to demonstrate that it will not let an illegitimate 
organization benefit from illegitimate support," said Michael Gold-Biss, a 
Colombian-born expert on the country at St. Cloud State University in 
Minnesota. "That's why the attorney general's office has to be assertive, 
go to Montería to dismantle some of this."

It remains unclear how much money the Self-Defense Forces have collected. 
But an American investigator in the United States Embassy who has tracked 
paramilitary financing schemes for years, speaking on condition of 
anonymity, says the group has anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion in 
bank and investment accounts in Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg and other 
countries.

Untold sums are also in Colombia, said the investigator, who added that the 
group most likely hid assets in the form of hotels, shopping centers and 
other property under its control.

"The Self-Defense Forces do not need to work hard to find resources," 
Isabel Cristina Bolaños Dereix, a former member knowledgeable about 
fund-raising, told investigators.

"If they legalized the Self-Defense Forces, many people would confess that 
they are giving money," she said, according to a transcript of her 
interrogation last September.

Indeed, documents from the inquiry, filed with a court in Bogotá, show that 
the group operated a network of accountants and middlemen who collected 
donations, then used front companies to funnel the money to the 
paramilitary forces.

Some details of the money-raising scheme came to light in May, when the 
attorney general's office raided the homes and organizations of suspected 
paramilitary group members and their supporters in Montería, carting off 
documents and computers and arresting four people. Thirty more are now 
being sought.

The attorney general told the court that donations generated from those and 
other groups supported an extreme right aimed at combating guerrillas on 
one hand, but also waging "a war without quarter against the Colombian left."

The documents said the violence was produced by "very defined sectors of 
society, like large landowners, ranchers, industrialists and financiers" 
who worked with drug traffickers, military officers and politicians to 
defend their interests. And they have done so through donations in the 
millions of dollars.

"In these documents we have been able to establish the expenditures for 
provisions and general costs," a high-ranking official in the attorney 
general's office said. "We have been able to follow the money."

But the attorney general's office faces daunting obstacles. The office is 
underfinanced and must often depend on the army to protect its 
investigators during dangerous operations. Several prosecutors have been 
assassinated in recent years; others have fled the country.

Prosecutors uncovered records, though, of outlays for arms, medicine, 
clothing and other necessities, as well as proof of paramilitary bank 
accounts, evidence that then led to the May raid, according to records 
filed in court in June.

The investigators determined that a nonprofit organization called the 
Foundation for Peace of Córdoba, seemingly set up to distribute farms to 
landless peasants, was in reality a money-collecting front whose directors 
and main benefactors were either paramilitary leaders or relatives, 
according to court records. At least two other front companies - Compañía 
Limited and Caheca Limited - worked with the foundation.

In three years the foundation managed more than $12 million, according to 
the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador, the first to report some of the 
investigation's findings.

The American investigator said, "It becomes hard to follow the funds when 
they move through an apparently legal structure."

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery in the last few months of the 
investigation is 200 tapes of phone conversations between paramilitary 
leaders like Carlos Castaño and prominent citizens, say officials familiar 
with the investigation.

In the ranch lands of southwestern Córdoba, people said raising money had 
never been hard.

"The fund-raising for the paramilitaries is easy, simple," said one 
prominent community leader. "They just go to Mr. So-and-So Rancher and say, 
`Look, do you feel safe?' He'll say: `Yes, I do. I can come here with my 
family.' They will then ask, `Well, please give us what you can.' "

Ms. Bolaños, the former paramilitary member, said the group used an office 
solely to oversee the national collection of funds. But the various units 
of the organization often determine how much residents will donate, often 
depending on the size of a ranch. "I have visited commanders who do big 
meetings with people who live in their region and they allow those people 
to decide how much they give," Ms. Bolaños said.

In Córdoba most ranchers, civic leaders and other prominent people who 
spoke about the organization recently said they had never given it money. 
But most also lauded the group for undertaking a job they said the 
government had long ignored. "We prefer to have the paramilitaries here, 
and not the guerrillas," explained Luis Alfredo García, president of a 
ranchers group, Ganacor, which was among the targets of the May raid. "That 
does not mean that I am financing and helping the Self- Defense Forces."

When asked about documented cases of rights abuses committed by the 
paramilitary forces, many said they believed that those killed had been 
rebels, or that the violations had been committed by guerrillas, then 
blamed on the paramilitaries.

"People here say we can go to our farms and sleep in peace, thanks to these 
men," said Mr. García Caicedo, the rancher who acknowledged giving money in 
the past. "If we do not cooperate with these people, what would happen to us?"
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D